[school-discuss] Cat-5 question

[Jim Aird <jimaird@hometech.org>]

I just got a new box (1000ft) of cat-5 cable and made five new runs 
through my office but couldn't get the links to come up.  After several 
hours of troubleshooting, re-crimping cables, moving hardware etc. I 
discovered that the new cable (four twisted pairs) is conducting on many 
tiny fibers of copper while the rest of our building, running fine, has 
a solid piece of copper within each of the 8 individual strands. 
Otherwise there is no difference.

Am I going nuts or is there something to the solid piece vs. the many 
tiny strands difference?

Any help within the next 1-24 hours would be a huge help, so I can be 
ready to drop in our new set of servers and firewalls and offer internet 
filtering (squid) and related services to the students by the first day 
of school.

Jim Aird
HomeTech Charter School